Weak
by Calm77
Summary: The weak and the broken do not lead.
1. Chapter 1

_Weak_

Disclaimer: Guess what, its not mine! Want a cookie?

A/N: No! Don't bring Angst in here! She reeks of self-pity and _nothing_ gets the stains out! AHHH!! -runs away and hides- Leave me Constructive Criticism, she's nice.

Weak. The word has many facets and connotations, but few of them are ever positive. Never when connected to a person. Animals can sense weakness in a group, creating a system of hierarchy.

People sense weakness in other people. The weak are used, abused, and discarded. Broken. They follow orders and then disclaim responsibility for their crimes. A strange dichotomy appears when the weak are crueler to each other than the strong.

Perhaps they do it to prove they can. Perhaps because the taste of such power is a heady thing they have never had and do not understand. Perhaps they do it to prove to themselves others are weaker than they are.

But whatever the reason, one thing remains: the weak do not lead.

In animal or human society the weak never truly lead. A figurehead may be weak but the ones pulling the strings never are.

Any member of AVALANCHE would say Cloud Strife was not weak. Many would say he was the strongest man they knew.

Some found this funny – a broken man, who had definitely suffered from bouts of insanity, who had failed at critical points, taken another man's identity, surely _he_ could not be called _strong._

But _strength_ is defined as the capacity for exertion or endurance. No man has never failed, never fallen down. Strength lay in the ability to get back up and keep going.

To _endure._

How many would have kept going after seeing his home town slaughtered, seen his world turned upside down, stayed even partially intact after Hojo's meddling? Survived losing one's _last living protector_? Held together in _any_ way after Sephiroth's mind games? The complete loss of identity? Knowing one's failures have cost loved ones their lives, and maybe the entire planet?

Many would have simply given up and died. Died in the flames that consumed Nibelheim, at Sephiroth's hand in the reactor, lost the will to live in the labs, given in to despair later.

The mere task of survival in such circumstances takes an incredible will to live, to stay at least partially out of despair. The loss of that will kills as surely as any bullet.

It is not to say Cloud came through unscathed. He lost a great deal – his home, job, dreams, his family, his sanity, his memories. Years off his life. Things none will willingly pay. He would never be the same, never able to look at the world without knowing the horrors _man_ is capable of inflicting.

Some would say he emerged a broken man. But broken men do not _save others_, do not help piece themselves back together. Broken men die. A broken object can be fixed, a broken man cannot.

Cloud Strife had bent, in some ways warped irrevocably. But he had not broken. He had lost battles – given the Black Materia to Sephiroth, almost killed Aeris, lost himself in the lifestream – but he never lost the war.

AVALANCHE doubted any other would have survived all Cloud had and still lead them to victory. None of them would ever envy him, all knowing in his place _they_ wouldn't have survived. Vincent could sympathize, but even he had never lost _everything,_ despite his monsters Vincent had never lost _himself_.

They found it ironic how Sephiroth, strongest of the strong, had broken after losing his identity, becoming an inhuman experiment. Had been _weak_, and displayed the cruelty of the truly weak. The all-powerful had no need of cruelty, being secure enough to be merciful. To be kind. Sephiroth had proved himself none of those things.

So even if Cloud himself would shrug and smile sheepishly as they told him he was strong, embarrassedly brushing the comments aside, they would keep telling him.

And woe to any who called Cloud Strife weak in their hearing.

_The End_


	2. Chapter 2

_The Mad_

Disclaimer: Not. Mine. Got milk?

A/N: Another Cloud-based drabble. NO ANGST. None. She had fleas. Take her outside.

What does one do with the mad? Who gets the blame?

_How_ can anyone decide?

Cloud didn't know. He understood madness, had walked the razor's edge between sanity and madness before.

If he had not walked that line the he could've ignored it. Could've blamed Sephiroth, Hojo, Jenova, Weiss, Nero, _all_ of them without a second thought.

But he'd been there, had walked that mile in their shoes. It wasn't a pleasant mile to walk. He never wanted to go there again.

The experience had changed him, how he looked at the world. How he looked at the mad. Cloud understood how madness warped one's perception of the outside world, how it warped one's actions.

How it was beyond one's control.

Cloud knew the mad must be stopped, but he would always sympathize with them. He wouldn't blame them.

They didn't understand what they were doing, not really. It had taken him years to accept it, but he had.

After all, he hadn't understood what he'd been doing when he'd given Sephiroth the Black Materia or when he'd been helpless while Zack died.

Who knew what was really going on inside their heads, who knew what they really thought they were doing.

Yes they had to be stopped. Yes they had committed heinous acts.

But they _were_ crazy.

Crazy, compulsive, schizophrenic, delusional, and paranoid. Not in complete control of their actions. Constrained by their broken psyches.

_In the grip of compulsion and madness._

Help would come too late for them.

_That_ was what made Cloud sympathize the most, feel the guiltiest. Help had come in time to save him. It had been the only thing between him and becoming Sephiroth's puppet or killing himself outright.

Oh Cloud understood. Even though it had taken years and years for him to allow himself to feel anything but hate for what they had done, he understood.

Hate only lasted so long. It was an exhausting emotion, one that Cloud had never really wanted to carried for long. Letting go of his hatred had been hard, but he had let it go.

Now he felt a kind of sympathy and understanding.

Cloud knew how easy it was to fall, how hard it was to stay sane. How impossible it was without help. How strength, stubbornness, and intelligence could only carry one so long.

_Every _man had a breaking point. _Every_ man needed support, help.

He felt pity too. These were people who needed help. And would never get it.

Whenever he thought of them one phrase always ran through his head.

_There but for the grace of God go I._

A/N: Alright I might have an actual story in the works soon. Might. Not really sure. Review anyways?


	3. Chapter 3

_Words_

_Disclai- Oh hell, I've had enough of these._

_A/N: Hey, guys! You should really go find an article called _Ruins and Poetry_ by Czeslaw Milosz. It was in the New York Review over twenty years ago but I just read it awhile back and its an amazingly insightful piece about how the perception of language itself changes. It's about Polish poetry during the 1939-1945 period. -Hears crickets chirping- Ah just a thought. Ummm...I'm not a big fan of poetry and I still loved it? I was overcome by enthusiasm?...I'll shut up now..._

Words aren't the same for Cloud Strife. _Language_ isn't the same.

When he was young Cloud loved words, but he didn't take them very seriously. Nibelheim wasn't exactly known for its libraries and 'book smarts' were slightly frowned upon.

His mother was the one who taught him to love words. '_Words are the fabric that civilization, government, and culture are cut from.'_ She'd said. She taught him the wonder of stringing words together, the joy of crafting a meaning out of them.

Cloud distrusts words now. It's a visceral revulsion he can't seem to shake. Even before he regained his memory flowery speeches made him ill. Then he wondered why Barret's radical call to arms in the first reactor they blew just made him want the man to shut up, and Rufus ShinRa's spiel in the Tower gave him nausea. Later he knew.

Words are the ground ideologies, dogmas, and theories spring from. Ideologies, dogmas, theories, theologies that've cost him and many others so much, no matter how quaint, sweet, and _just_ they sound. Words have been the only burial shroud for many he's cared for.

Everything is cloaked in words. ShinRa's message of jobs for all and cheap power for every home. Hojo's clinical impersonal scientific notes. AVALANCHE's radical call to save the Planet. Even Sephiroth's righteous indignation, his demand for retribution and the setting right of long ago wrongs. All these have changed Cloud's world forever.

Language has irrevocably changed to him. He's seen it twist and deceive in ways it never should. Now he prefers language in its simplest form – a tool to name reality in its objective, tangible, and terrifying concreteness. Only in that form is language safe to him.

The complicated confusing messages and high ideas don't tell of reality. They gloss over the ugly parts, tell the fairy tale 'Happily Ever After's and show only what the creator wants. The corporation willing to drop a plate on it's own citizens and the blood on a Turk's uniform aren't in President ShinRa's speeches. Hojo's notes talk clinically of 'specimens' and 'results' but they don't tell of how hunger became more important than taste or how the screams could echo and silence became the best way to deal with pain. Barret doesn't like to talk about how red the blood of the reactor guards is spilled on the ground, or how the explosion could send body parts flying in all directions like human shrapnel. Sephiroth never spoke of how flames can make skin bubble and melt.

_That_ is Cloud's reality. Forgotten and passed over.

He doesn't trust words now. He's seen the world's greatest general go mad from them, and he knows how important a pep talk is before a major battle. The _power_ of words he doesn't doubt at all, but he's seen to much hidden, warped, and changed.

Objects are what he'd rather be surrounded with now. A pebble won't suddenly burn down your home without cause or warning. A package won't deliver itself. They're logical things, unswayed by the unpredictableness of human emotion.

After Meteor he could've done anything, started any number of organizations, demanded any role he wanted in government. But then he'd be back with the careful metaphors and euphemisms. Bak surrounded by the theorists he detests.

A delivery job is concrete, the objective is plain. Get this from point A to point B. Get paid for it. Nothing is hidden. He prefers it that way.

Cloud figures he's been through enough to call a spade a spade and he doesn't care who he offends doing it sometimes. Rufus ShinRa can ask for a 'meeting' to pontificate at length, Sephiroth can talk of rights and reunions, Aeris can offer mysterious snippets. He's sick of it.

All of it.

Review? Pretty please?


End file.
